


Love-in-a-mist

by Petra



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: F/M, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Mehta was right. AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love-in-a-mist

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Em & FairestCat for encouragement. Spoilers through Cryoburn.

Cordelia has a recurring nightmare about the first time Aral kissed her on what wasn't yet Sergyar outside of a prison camp.

Their lips touch. It should be perfection. It was, then.

She dreams that she shoves him away instead of clinging to him. When she's safely home on Beta Colony in her dream, she does not hold on to the truth about Serg's assassination. She tells Dr. Mehta all the truth she knows.

Barrayar falls into chaos.

Further into chaos, she would have said then.

When she wakes beside her husband, she knows the difference is one of degree.

It hurts the first day she wakes without him, not because they are on different planets or he is called away for peace or war, but because he has gone where she will not follow. 

Yet. 

Her sons are here--Miles strengthening in his countship, Mark richer and happier daily, Gregor as wise as she ever hoped--her grandchildren, her friends. All the reasons to keep on, not least that Aral would have wanted her to continue.

Over dinner in Alys's flat, Simon remarks, "I'm so glad the treatment worked, Cordelia."

Alys says, "Simon," quellingly.

Simon goes pale.

Cordelia asks, "What treatment?"

"It was experimental," Simon says, his eyes focused on the past.

Alys says, "Simon," pleadingly.

"Captain Negri thought it would work, but only on the right subjects. Aral fought him, and Ezar, but he couldn't--"

"Couldn't what?"

"Aral couldn't let you go. Not knowing what you knew about Serg, not without knowing you'd come back. Not when he loved you so much."

"When?" Cordelia asks.

"After Escobar."

She frowns, remembering their first kiss and how much it had hurt when he let her go. "That's exactly what he did."

"Don't," Alys says.

"We destroyed the formula years ago." Simon smiles.

"What did the formula do?" Cordelia asks, spacing her words carefully.

Alys is paler than her cream tablecloth.

Simon's voice goes blank, lost chip-memory surfacing. "It modified the immune response and the endocrine system to produce a chemical dependence in its subjects. The chemist who designed it called it Love-in-Idleness after a play."

"Chemical dependence?"

Alys puts her perfectly coiffed head in her perfectly manicured hands.

"On the person administering the drug. It wore off after four months in the animal testing."

Alys's apartment is colder than Kyril Island.

"And in the human testing?"

"I don't recall." Simon frowns. "Sorry."

Cordelia is standing with one of the knives in her hand, Vor-class dining ware fit to stab an enemy instead of a vat-grown steak. She doesn't know when she stood, or when Barrayar twisted up her head enough that she'd think to grab a knife--though she's forming a theory on the latter. "Are you telling me Aral drugged me into returning?"

"And then you stayed." Simon smiles, falters. "Didn't he tell you?"

"No."

"But you've been safe here for decades. Happy." Simon studies her face. "You didn't want to leave."

"Did I ever have a choice?" Cordelia's voice goes shrill.

"Yes," Alys says, standing. Only on Barrayar would a woman of her caliber have a stunner at her immaculate dining table with her so-called dearest friend. "You had thousands of choices and chances, and you stayed."

"I couldn't go home." How long has it been since Beta was home?

Alys looks at her as if she is a Vor maiden squandering her virtue. "The heroine of Escobar could have gone anywhere if she'd wanted to. Lady Vorkosigan. The Vicereine of Sergyar. When Miles died, and every time you came back to Barrayar, you chose."

"My will was not my own."

Alys laughs once, bitterly. The stunner bounces in her hand. "Whose is, in all things? I married at my father's bidding, I bore my child in war, I serve my Emperor with all my heart. I did not choose any of those, at the outset. But I was Padma's wife, Ivan's mother, Gregor's aunt and secretary. I could have turned away."

"You weren't drugged." Cordelia hesitates. "Were you?"

"I was ordered. Is that more honorable?"

"You could have turned away." Cordelia clings to that.

"Six months, in the longest animal trial, even with continued dosage. No, you fell in love."

"Six months?" Simon asks. He could be inquiring about the weather forecast in the same tone.

Cordelia does not scream.

"He told me to watch her especially closely then." Alys's mouth twists. "He wouldn't have risked exposing your child to untested chemicals. Not little Lord Vorkosigan. Not even afterward."

Cordelia does not scream. Her entire body flinches.

"Naturally," Simon says, relaxing as if that settles everything.

"Aral wouldn't have done that," Cordelia says. Does not scream.

"Of course he didn't want to kill you, but--Serg." Simon sighs. "What choice did he have?"

"He could have trusted me."

Alys laughs hollowly.

Cordelia backs away from the table, still gripping the knife.

Alys does not stun her.

"I'm going home," Cordelia says, and turns, and walks out.

The Vorkosigan armsman waiting for her breaks off a conversation with Alys's personal guard and notes the knife. "Are you all right, milady?"

"I need--" She falters.

She can't leave the planet with only a knife, although this time she is wearing real shoes.

Mark's Escobaran enterprises will take her in if Beta does not.

Miles will deny her nothing.

Her last wish as Dowager Countess Vorkosigan, then: "Take me to the spaceport."

"Yes, milady."

Traffic snarls around the car despite the late hour. Entropy is indistinguishable from malice.

Like love.

It's so congested that the Emperor reaches the spaceport before she does. With his Lord Auditor.

Miles reaches toward her, all horrified concern. "Mother--"

She can't look at him without seeing his father.

That has never made her ill before.

Whatever he knows, whatever he's ever known, he says, "Don't do this. You know he loved you."

It's the same comfort Simon tried to give her, and it's just as ineffective from Miles.

"I never doubted that."

"Then stay. Think about what you're doing."

"Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, We require a private audience with the Dowager Countess."

No one else could make Miles back away.

Gregor looks as nauseated as Cordelia feels. The Customs interrogation room that his men clear is small, bare, and according to the man's tight nod, unmonitored. They are nearly knee to knee. He is not at her knee, as he once was. "I'm sorry," he says, no voice of the Imperium.

"When did you find out?"

"After I learned about my father, I demanded to know what other unspeakable sins Simon and Aral had hidden."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"They swore that it was a moot point. That your blood showed no signs of the medication, and had not since before Miles was born." Gregor closes his eyes. "I checked your medical files, and they told the truth."

"Or they modified the files."

"Not all of them." Gregor's smile is thin as a knife. "We apologize for testing you independently without your knowledge, but it was necessary for the safety of the Imperium."

Cordelia breathes more easily. The atmosphere is one percent oxygen, not zero. "For the Imperium?"

"For the good of the Emperor, whose heart would have broken."

"Don't request and require me to stay," she says, begs, does not call him sire, not when his eyes are the eyes of a little boy talking to his stegosaurus.

Gregor shakes his head once. "You are as free as any of Our citizens to come and go as you please, but We will send a delegation with you to Beta Colony."

Whatever Aral's sins, she loves Gregor for himself.

"Who would the delegation consist of?"

"Empress Laisa and Countess Vorkosigan, and a security detail." His expression does not change when he uses guile. Not like Miles's.

"I'd be honored."

*

The dear old sandbox is too hot, too dry, and too sunny, but the cutting-edge medical facilities are everything she's missed. Cordelia finds herself making mental notes for what to order next for the hospitals she may never see again.

The full systemic workup takes days. "We've found several unidentified chemicals in your body, Ms. Vorkosigan," the doctor says apologetically. "Until we synthesize them and test them, we can't be sure what their effects are."

"Take all the time you need." Cordelia spends the days with Ekaterin and Laisa, hoping, fearing.

Laisa gets a clean bill of health. Then Ekaterin. 

*

"It's a fascinating fat soluble molecule," the doctor says.

"What does it do?"

Chemistry was never Cordelia's strong suit. She catches "oxytocin" and "specific immunological trigger," along with "recurring," "additive," and "unpredictable."

"Targeted simulated limerence. Amazing that Barrayarans created it at all," the doctor says.

"Thank you," Cordelia says, when she can speak again.

"We can create a molecule to deactivate it, given time."

"It won't find a new target?"

"No, no. You see--" She doesn't grasp the explanation, but she doesn't need to.

"If it won't hurt me, leave it where it is." Cordelia sighs. "I should go home."


End file.
